Getting Crafty: Paint Swatch Calendar

As mentioned in a previous post, back in April my girlfriends and I decided to get together at least once a month and do a craft we find on Pinterest.  We all agree on the activity and take turns hosting and making lunch.  The first was in April and my girlfriend Kate hosted.  We decided on the paint swatch calendar project which you can find here on my pinterest.

Supplies needed:

• Picture Frame
• Poster Board
• Paint Swatches
• Glue
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Dry Erase Markers
• Exacto Knife/Cutting Board (Alternate to scissors)

First we laid the paint swatches out on the table.  Please notice my over abundance of swatches... I went to home depot and got completely carried away. Those are PILES of swatches.  I brought enough for the whole group!

Next is where you get creative and figure out what color scheme you want to go with!  I'm completely indecisive and changed mine around a million times.  I recommend taking the colors you want and laying them out in order before starting to cut.

This was my final line up!

One small step that needs to be done here is cutting your poster board the same size as the glass in your frame.  This is what you'll glue your swatches on.  I randomly had small posterboard that was the same size as my frame so I didn't need to do this step! Score!

Next comes the most tedious part of the project, sizing and cutting.  I'm super anal and needed to be sure my calendar would be completely centered, perfectly spaced and all the same size. (I'm crazy)  In order to figure out what size I wanted I took the stock picture that came in the frame and put it on the outside of the glass face down in the frame so I could see the diminsions of the paper that shows through the frame. Here I could use my ruler and write all over it to figure out what size the squares should be.  I also decided that I wanted to make my Saturday and Sunday squares larger because I always have more things to do on the weekends. *Be sure to leave enough room at the top for the days of the week and month name!

Here are my squares all laid out after cutting. Scissors work really well but I recommend using a cutting board, exacto knife & ruler because I think its faster and makes the lines look cleaner. I did some rearranging to make sure I was happy with my semi-ombre look of each color. 

After laying out all my squares I started laying them down inside the frame.

When you have all the squares laid out in the right order and you're happy with the spacing start gluing!  I used tacky glue (because it's what I brought) but I think a glue stick would work better.  I noticed my squares got slightly wrinkled from the glue so I started only putting a tiny dot on each one.

When you're all done gluing you can put it in the frame! I added a long gray swatch piece to the top where I'll write the month in.

Next grab your dry erase markers and write in the dates.





 And you're done!  Here is a picture of our finished products.

We are all so happy with how they turned out.  It was a really fun project and very easy to do. 

Cupcakes in celebration of AK's birthday

A few other options ideas come from the other girls pieces. KA (update: now KM) used an all glass frame to do hers so you could see through it.  KS used rounded off swatches instead of making squares or rectangles.  MG used a larger frame and made her days smaller so that she could fit two months onto her calendar.  There are are so many options! I love that we all did the project together but they all came out so different.  I definitely recommend this project to others!

xo, Jess